42 thoughts on “Who benefits from the Tory decision to axe BBC recipes?”

Time will tell. A story is a conspiracy until proved otherwise. I’m sure that Tom will unreservedly apologise personally to you Robeson if he is proved wrong; will you apologize unreservedly and politely if he is proved right?

James, relative hosting costs are so miniscule in this instance that they’re essentially non-existent. BBC Food is first in Google UK for “Food”, amongst thousands of other search terms. The value of this kind of brand-awareness far outweighs any insignificant hosting costs.

“How exactly do you arrive at the conclusion that the Gov’t has FORCED the BBC to remove these recipes?” – well forced may be not, but strongly suggested for sure… “If you’ve got a website that’s got features and cooking recipes – effectively the BBC website becomes the national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster. There are those sorts of issues we need to look at very carefully,” Osborne

Taste was originally a joint venture between Carlton TV and Sainsbury’s, but it flopped and in 2001 was closed down with all assets (and presumably the URL) returning to Sainsburys. Not seen any mention of it re-launching anywhere. What’s the source for this?

They say it costs too much to run two websites.. So they are cutting the one that is in keeping with their Charter – containing NO adverts – and keeping the one that has paid advertising on it.. And fewer recipes.
Obviously, it’s about privatising.. Again!

The Tories are hellbent on extracting everything of value that has been built up by taxpayers over decades and stuffing the lot into private pockets. They are not ‘saving’ money for taxpayers they are making money for themselves.

While I deplore the way the Conservatives are backing the BBC into a corner, I don’t think the notion that withdrawing the BBC recipes is some sort of a cunning plan to help Rupert Murdoch take over the world.

A specialist site, all about food, with its own recipe section – and funded by advertising, not by the licence fee, so doesn’t have to abide by government-enforced cost savings. An ideal alternative berth, which neatly takes the recipes out of the argument. If they’ve got to go somewhere, why not here?

In the second place, the assumption that the demise of BBC recipes will leave a massive gap into which the likes of Rupert Murdoch can slickly insert themselves is just that – an assumption.

…and so on. There are more – many more – than those I’ve listed, but I think that lot illustrates my point. If you want to see more, Google ’em up, like I did.

So even if the BBC recipe site vanished tomorrow, it would not leave a particularly big gap in the market. If anything, I’d say the market is already overcrowded – it could probably do with a bit of thinning out. It’s not like there’s an easy prize here for an opportunistic entrepreneur.

Yes, Mark Goodge, as a more than competent web developer I could put a recipe site together fairly quickly, though it would be pretty useless without the recipes to load into the database.

The BBC has invested in thousands of them, perhaps that’s worth spending money on, whether you think that’s a waste or not is up to you, but I think it’s a waste not to utilise a resource that has been built up at the licence fee payers expense.

Ken Penethbysaid:May 18, 2016 at 12:32 am
Let’s hope it wasn’t because the beef recipes might have offended our Hindu citizen
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First they came for the Muslims, and ….
Then they came for the Hindus ….,

If you’re going to start a new a conspiracy theory then you really ought to make it about something a bit more interesting than a recipe web site! Here’s a suggestion…. How about one where the world is controlled by alien lizards?

@aaagreenman – I ignored the entry because the author seemed to think who “THEY” are was irrelevant and so not worth mentioning. Did he mean the Tories, the BBC, the ‘Establishment’, Rupert Murdoch?…… or maybe alien lizards!

Add this to the list http://goodfood.kitchen seems to have also taken advantage of the of the pending vacuum with another recipe food website.

I don’t always agree with the BBC and have felt that we are paying too much for a TV license that we have no say in where the money is spent. I don’t particular want my money spent on BBC pursuits of interest that are broadly covered by other websites equally or much better, and would rather it utilized for their TV programming and the news.